An Honest ReactionI Wasted 7 Years of My Life Watching ‘Pretty Little Liars’ For It to Crash and Burn in Just One Episode

After seven years of black hoodies, vague AF yet still beyond terrifying text messages, debating whether Mona is actually trustworthy to wondering how Aria, Spencer, Hanna, Emily and Alison were always so stylish (and legit never wore sweatpants to school), Pretty Little Liars came to an end with the last episode, "'Till Death Do Us Part." And it was an ending indeed, one that I still can't fully process. A plot twist-filled, "did they really do that?" way to say goodbye to the town of Rosewood and all the weird things that go on there.

Well, I'm left sitting here feeling a bit like I just wasted many hours of my life for a final episode that didn't really deliver. It just left me even more confused.

So obviously everyone wanted to know who is A.D., the evil genius who has been torturing our fave group of liars. Was it Melissa? Wren? One of the girls' loves, Toby, Caleb or Ezra? Or one of the main ladies themselves? There have been countless theories out there and, yes, part of why this series was so addicting was the fact that you could spend hours coming up with some crazy idea about who this mysterious figure who loves to wear black is. We finally found out that A.D. is Alex Drake, Spencer's evil twin sister.

So of course, I was first met with shock.

Troian Bellisario has a British accent out of nowhere! She did actually do an amazing job playing these two characters, especially in the scenes just between Spencer and Alex but, hear me out for a second, where did this twin come from? All this time we've been thinking it was a character we already knew but no, it was someone we didn't even know existed until now. Troian spilled in an interview with Elle that the mastermind behind all the madness, Marlene King, told her about this storyline ages ago.

"I was first told in the beginning of season five. Marlene took me aside and told me, 'I have an idea, but I don't know if the network will let me do it…' Then she sat me down and explained this whole ending to me. She said, 'You cannot tell anybody. It might not even happen.' So I sat on it for over a year. Then at the end of season six, she said, 'We're going to do it,'" Troian said.

"Originally, the show was only supposed to last five years. So she was going to take it through to Charlotte being revealed as A, and that was it. But around season four, the network contacted her and said they really wanted to take the show through to seven seasons. That's when she had to start creating this whole other world, with a new ultimate villain. By the time she let me in on it, she had been thinking about it for at least a full year and had really fleshed it out. Over the next two years, we got to build it together."

So the concept of Spencer having an evil twin who was the new big bad has been in the making for literal years. And yet we have no sign and clues of this until this final batch of episodes. Hmm, okay sure.

The explanation behind Alex and her motives is that when Spencer and Alex's mom Mary Drake gave birth in Radley, Spencer's parents had agreed to adopt her, unaware that Mary was pregnant with twins. Apparently no one knew Mary was having twins and my first question was, what kind of doctors was Mary being treated by? So the Hastings leave with baby Spencer while Alex got sent to a British family. She apparently had issues and they were an awful choice of a family, since they sent her away, and she was on her own at only 10 years old.

When good old Wren (Melissa's former flame who had a thing for Spencer) stopped into a bar Alex was working at, he couldn't believe Alex Drake existed. Same bro, same. He told her all about Spencer and the girls, and about Spencer and Alex's other sister, Charlotte, and after Charlotte was killed, Alex went on to become A.D. Let's take note of how Wren and Alex fell in love, but she ended up killing him instead of breaking up with him because she wanted to take over Spencer's life and Wren just wasn't into this idea.

OK, so how does one town have so many twins? There must be something in that Rosewood water because I feel like twins just came out of nowhere. Like the fact that Emily and Alison are moms to twins. Alison gave birth to Emily and Wren's twin girls. Yes, Wren is the mysterious sperm donor who although he is a bit crazy, at least he's v handsome, so him and Emily's daughters will be beauties that's for sure. But like, the twins seem to run in Spencer and Alison's super dysfunctional family (they're cousins, as you may remember) not Emily's, and yet here we are with more twins. Bizarre, I tell you.

Now, I was happy to see the girls all get their happy endings. Weddings, babies, no more having someone making their lives legit hell. But the actual capturing of Alex happened so quickly. It felt like we didn't really get to know her all that much and it was a rushed explanation, which was the way I felt when it was revealed that Charlotte was A. All these details just came in one scene and it was a lot to take in. Alex was planning on taking over Spencer's life while Spence chilled underground in the basement of the house Toby built in town but still, it was blink, and Mona's like "I called the cops," and they get her. Can we even trust that Mona called the actual police? Who let her be the one to make that call? Not a smart move if I say so myself.

Speaking of Mona, what even was that final scene? She has a French boyfriend and runs a weird doll shop and when she goes downstairs to prep her dolls for some tea time, we see that it's actually Mary and Alex who are living in a real dollhouse that Mona is controlling? HOW DID MARY AND ALEX ESCAPE THE POLICE? Rosewood P.D. is honestly the worst, they don't know how to solve any crime.

So I basically just have to accept the fact that the A.D. reveal was a major letdown for the simple fact that tbh, it didn't feel like this plot was as thought out as I'm sure it was. Marlene knows how to write a captivating TV show, she's had me and millions of other people hooked for seven seasons. That's a long time! PLL is the last show from my high school days that I was still consistently watching. But the execution just didn't do this series justice in my mind. Perhaps I just wanted more.

Having an evil twin come out of nowhere is a plot device straight out of the telenovelas I grew up watching with my grandma. Seriously, if you want some real OMG worthy drama, watch a Spanish soap opera. But alas, here we are, at the end of the PLL journey and I'm honestly happy to be hopping off this crazy train.